Schoelkopf Gallery presents Clifford Ross | What Remains…, a solo exhibition showcasing a powerful new series of graphite and ink paintings from 2020–21. From March 7 till April 25, 2025, Ross’s return to painting which started in 2013, even while he continued his well known work in photography.
The return to painting after more than 20 years allowed for a deep exploration of the interconnection between photography and painting, nature and abstraction—which have always been the main parameters of Ross’s decades-long pursuit of the sublime.
Ross, widely known for his pioneering work in photography and computer-generated animation, began his career as a painter in the slipstream of Abstract Expressionism. His artistic path took an unexpected turn in the mid-1990s when photography became, in his words, a necessity—a visceral need to capture the elemental forces of nature in real-time.
However, painting remained an integral part of his artistic vision, even as a photographer. By 2013, he felt an urgency to return to painting, feeling it was a counterbalance to his work with digital media. This realization led to an entirely new body of work, where photography exists in dynamic conjunction with painted abstract imagery.
What Remains… draws its starting point from Ross’s 2003 high-resolution photograph of Mount Sopris, Colorado, Mountain XIII. This image served as the basis for multiple other artworks including Harmonium Mountain I, a computer-generated video with an original score by Philip Glass (2010), a stunning 28 by 28-foot stained-glass installation, Austin Wall (2012), in the U.S. Federal Courthouse, Austin, Texas, and Sopris Wall, a large-scale print on wood for MASS MoCA (2015). Elements of all three artworks are interwoven underneath the surfaces of his new paintings, creating a rich dialogue between different media and allowing the artist to respond to the natural world with the emotional power of abstraction. As Ross worked on the entirely abstract painting Conversation with a Silent Man, the underlying imagery of Mount Sopris was eliminated, not as an embrace of Rauschenberg’s famous work when he erased a de Kooning drawing, but declaring his own belief in abstraction’s ability to express our experience with the natural world. The lush and simmering graphite surface evokes the instances of mystery and quiet that he finds in nature.
Ross’s process of layering source material from multiple media—photography, computer- generated animation, and stained glass—with lavish applications of liquid graphite creates works that explore both the sublime and the abstract. Ross is inspired by art and literature, and in the process of painting, found this body of work had common cause with Wallace Stevens’s oblique use of language – hence, the titles of the majority of the work in the exhibition derive from Stevens’s poetry. Stevens’s poem, An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, explores the tension between the half that is illuminated and the half that remains in shadow—concepts that resonate throughout Ross’s What Remains…, where nature’s grandeur coexists with its mysteries.
Ross has spent decades immersed in nature, from photographing mountains to capturing hurricane waves by camera while neck-deep in the surf. “Nature provides a symphonic and complex experience, says Clifford Ross. Cacophony and silence, clarity and obscurity, stillness and tumult. It’s an endless source of wonder, and a never-ending job express it. Artists like me have job security.”
Ross’s last solo painting exhibition took place in 1994. Now, three decades later, What Remains… marks a profound return, merging his multi-media practice with the immediacy of graphite and ink.
“Seeing this body of work is revelatory,” said Alana Ricca, Managing Director of Schoelkopf Gallery. “Ross’s iterative and relentless pursuit of abstraction has this sense of incredible urgency and stillness at the same time, just as is our experience of nature. Schoelkopf Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition, as we expect it will be equally as surprising to those familiar and unfamiliar with Ross’s work.”
Clifford Ross’s What Remains… is an immersive exploration of nature’s continuous transformation—through light, color, and form—and a testament to the artist’s unwavering commitment to reimagining the world around him.
What Remains… will be on view at Schoelkopf Gallery from March 7 – April 25, 2025, with an opening reception on March 6, 2025, from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Clifford Ross
Starting his career with a one-person show of abstract paintings in 1976 at the age of 24, in 1994 he pivoted to photography and became known for his black & white photographs of hurricane waves. In 2002 he invented and patented his revolutionary R1 camera to photograph Mount Sopris in Colorado, which allowed him to produce some of the highest resolution large-scale landscape photographs in the world.
Even while dedicated to the natural world, he produced entirely abstract photographs. Celebrating his dual practice, critic and philosopher Arthur Danto titled a 2005 essay on Ross, Hegel in the Hamptons. Ross’s pursuit of abstraction carries forward the modernist impulse started by American artists of the early 20th century including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin, as well as the pioneering work of Abstract Expressionists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, all of whom Ross cites as influences and inspirations.
In 2013, Ross returned to painting as a part of his artistic practice. Today, Ross works across painting, photography, and computer-generated animation to create work that captures and conveys the sublime in nature. Dedicated to innovating and expanding creative possibilities across various media, Ross has developed new techniques his entire career.
Ross’s works have been exhibited globally, and are in the collections of numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.
Schoelkopf Gallery
Schoelkopf Gallery is the unrivaled and most trusted global leader in American Art, dealing in exceptional primary and secondary market works from the 19th century to the present. Working directly with major artists, estates, and foundations, the gallery is dedicated to stewarding their legacies and deepening appreciation of their work. Led by Andrew Schoelkopf and Alana Rica with a world-class team of specialists and researchers, the gallery holds a longstanding reputation for superior market intelligence and expertise, serving as a resource and advisor for the most significant and active collectors in the world. The gallery is deeply committed to taking a personalized approach with its global clientele, providing an unparalleled suite of services and support through every aspect of the collecting process. This includes strategic advisory services, acquisitions, deaccessioning, institutional loans, long-term collection management, USPAP compliant appraisals, sales of entire estates and collections, and commissioning of new scholarship and research on behalf of collectors. The gallery creates access points and opportunities for engagement with American Art and its key figures. Its rigorous year-round program features a dynamic slate of exhibitions and events at its expansive space in Tribeca, as well as robust online resources and the biannual magazine Now Modern.
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